The .5 release name for a major product reflects a change in our internal nomenclature for naming products, a business decision that was made after careful deliberation.

Going forward this more accurately reflects our strategy of shipping products with high value for customers, while simultaneously planning for certain types of features whose depth may require a longer timeframe to develop and integrate.

The 8.5 name is also indicative of the fact that 8.5 is available as an downloadable upgrade. i.e. unlike earlier versions it can upgrade an existing SONAR 8 install.

Don't be confused by the .5 in the name. 8.5 IS the next version of SONAR — It installs as a brand new version and lives alongside your existing SONAR 8 version just like any prior full release of SONAR.

You can also simultaneously use 8.5 or an earlier 8.0 version just like any earlier full release of SONAR.

If you purchased SONAR 8.5 as a downloadable upgrade, you must have SONAR 8 installed prior to installing SONAR 8.5. To reduce download size, the package doesn't include all the content that you already have in your SONAR 8 install.

You can also purchase a full set of 8.5 DVDs even if you bought the download from our web store.

If you bought the retail version of 8.5 from a store you already have the full 8.5 DVD set with all the content.

There is no difference between an 8.0 install upgraded to 8.5 and a full retail 8.5 box install.

The depth of the new features and enhancements in 8.5 actually exceed what went into SONAR 8 coming from SONAR 7.

FICTION:

The main SONAR 9 release was postponed and SONAR 8.5 is a patch or hotfix. Wrong - our patch/hotfix releases are for bug fixes only with the occasional bonus feature thrown in. We never add full blown features.

A new version of SONAR is around the corner and 8.5 is an interim release. Wrong - We're good, but not THAT good to be able to deliver a full new product just after shipping this one. Thanks for the compliment though :-)

So let's cut to the chase shall we? There are several classes of new features in SONAR 8.5. I will try and focus on the pieces that are not covered in our marketing copy since by now you are already familiar with most of that. You can read more about the big features here if you are still catching up with SONAR 8.5.

SONAR Producer 8.5.1 Matrix View Update

The information in this article applies to:

SONAR 8.5 Producer

This free update for SONAR 8.5 Producer owners improves performance of SONAR's new Matrix view and adjusts the behavior of the Retrigger and Latch modes. It is recommended for all users of the Matrix view.

Matrix view issues addressed in 8.5.1:

In some system configurations, MIDI clips could not always be triggered at low latencies

Some MIDI controllers would not trigger cells properly when latch was set to OFF

The first MIDI note of a cell would sometimes not play when triggered

Under certain conditions with Follow Transport set to ON cells would not stop when SONAR's transport was stopped

Audio glitches could sometimes occur when quickly triggering MIDI clips within the same row

There was a memory leak in Session Drummer 3 upon opening and closing projects

In French version of SONAR, some SD3 kits played at +12dB to +20dB too loud

On Windows 7 x64, closing and opening the UI during playback sometimes caused SD3 to no longer play audio

Various content issues with the following kits:

Steven Slate Kits

StevenSlate_OldZepKit_Dry and StevenSlate_SizzleKit_Dry had cutoff problems when quiet notes followed loud notes

StevenSlate_SizzleKit_Dry hi hats were not grouped

Dry kits weren't choking the hi hats properly

Sidesticks weren't full velocity sensitive and did not play properly at low velocities

Crash cymbals and toms were cutting themselves off

Toms were not correctly decending in pitch from Note 50 down to the lowest Floor Tom

Sonic Reality Kits

Some side stick sounds didn't have full velocity scaling; a very low velocity would trigger a loud sound

Some open hi-hats sounded like pedal hats, and had excessive low frequency content

Snares were monophonic; hitting a snare twice would produce an unexpected cutoff sound

Some snare rolls played too slow

PremrTimbaleKit: Right Hand Snare, Note 40, and Right Hand Low Snare, note 43, at high velocity, had an audible click in the right speaker

ClassicRock Kit: Crash Cymbal on Note 49 triggered a Bell hit of the Cymbal rather than a normal Crash Cymbal

Blues Kit: The Snare Roll samples had an audible hissing noise

BritRock Kit: The Snare Roll had an audible clicking on the attack

RingBeats Kit

There was an audible hissing noise in the Snare Roll

There was audible clicking in some velocity layers of the Snare Roll

SideStick had doubled/flamed hits towards the upper velocities

TR-707 had missing floor tom sample

TR-808_bright had missing low cymbal sample

DarkLordOfTheSethKits: sidestick was not fully velocity sensitive

NPulse kit contained some samples with extra hits at the very end

Groovy Kit Brushes Note 39 played the wrong sample

Track View

Archived folders did not preserve Mute and Solo states

Set Snap Offset to Now Time did not always persist the offset in clip properties

Bouncing multiple Groove Clips that were split and moved sometimes yielded unpredictable results

Groove Clips starting at Measure 1 played back incorrectly after the start time was adjusted

SONAR sometimes did not draw clip waveforms for long WAVE64 audio files

Improved stability with Groove Clips

Video

Video sometimes did not maintain sync while looping in project

Video was out of sync when using the audio metronome count-in

Video lost sync when changing Now Time during playback

WMV videos are sometimes displayed upside down when first imported into SONAR in Windows Vista or Windows7

After installing the update, please review the ReadMe file for more information. This download includes English, French, German, Italian and Spanish updates for all supported operating systems. This update is for both the 32 and 64-bit versions of SONAR 8.5 and can be applied on SONAR 8.5 or 8.5.1